Conventionally, design of printed circuit boards has been performed by using a printed circuit board designing equipment being a CAD system that is a designing equipment supported by a computer.
Meanwhile, in designing a printed circuit board, it is necessary to take a function realized by the printed circuit board, circuit parts that need to be mounted on a board in order to realize the function, and the size of an enclosure arranging the printed circuit board thereon in consideration, consider the layout of the printed circuit board such that circuit parts can be installed in the enclosure having an actually decided size, and perform circuit design and layout design.
According to conventional printed circuit board designing equipments, it was possible to simultaneously perform circuit design and layout design regarding a single printed circuit board. More specifically, in the conventional printed circuit board designing equipment, design environment where circuit design and layout design are simultaneously performed only in a single printed circuit board was provided, circuit design and layout design could not be simultaneously performed for a plurality of printed circuit boards.
For this reason, in the case of simultaneously performing the design of a plurality of printed circuit boards, as information necessary in design processing of each printed circuit board, design information being theoretical information that constitutes circuits relating to a plurality of printed circuit boards (circuit design information to be described later, for example) and design information being physical information that constitutes layouts relating to the above-described plurality of printed circuit boards (layout design information to be described later, for example) need to be appropriately sent and received between each printed circuit board, such sending and receiving of design information has to be performed by designers themselves taking many procedures, and there was a problem that work efficiency of design work deteriorated drastically.
For example, in the case of parallelly designing three printed circuit boards of a board A, a board B and a board C, design of each printed circuit board is performed while appropriately referring to circuit design information A for designing connection of circuit parts installed on the board A, circuit design information B for designing connection of circuit parts installed on the board B and circuit design information C for designing connection of circuit parts installed on the board C, layout design information A for designing the arrangement of circuit parts on the board A, layout design information B for designing the arrangement of circuit parts on the board B and layout design information C for designing the arrangement of circuit parts on the board C.
Herein, FIGS. 1(a)(b)(c)(d) show conceptual explanatory views of the board A, the board B and the board C on a design stage. In the initial state shown in FIG. 1(a), three circuit parts (a1, a2, a3) reflecting the circuit design information A exist on the board A, and these circuit parts (a1, a2, a3) severally have four terminals on both sides, that is, eight in total. Further, one terminal of the circuit part a1 is connected with one terminal of the circuit part a2 and one terminal of the circuit part a2 is connected with one terminal of the circuit part a3 reflecting the circuit design information A. Then, the circuit parts (a1, a2, a3) are severally arranged on the board A reflecting the layout design information A.
Similarly, three circuit parts (b1, b2, b3) each having eight terminals reflecting the circuit design information B exist on the board B. Further, one terminal of the circuit part b1 is connected with one terminal of the circuit part b2 and one terminal of the circuit part b2 is connected with one terminal of the circuit part b3 reflecting the circuit design information B. Then, the circuit parts (b1, b2, b3) are severally arranged on the board B reflecting the layout design information B.
Furthermore, three circuit parts (c1, c2, c3) each having eight terminals reflecting the circuit design information C exist on the board C. Further, one terminal of the circuit part c1 is connected with one terminal of the circuit part c2 and one terminal of the circuit part c2 is connected with one terminal of the circuit part c3 reflecting the circuit design information C. Then, the circuit parts (c1, c2, c3) are severally arranged on the board C reflecting the layout design information C.
Herein, description will be made for sending and receiving of the circuit design information and the layout design information between each printed circuit board, which are generated in the case of moving the circuit part a1 being one of the circuit parts of the board A from the board A to the board C, and connecting the terminals of the circuit part a1 with the terminals of the circuit part c3 from the initial state shown in FIG. 1(a).
More specifically, from the initial state shown in FIG. 1(a) showing the state where the circuit design information and the layout design information before moving the circuit part is moved are reflected, a designer performs processing of deleting the information of the circuit part a1 from the layout design information A on the board A to change the layout of the board A from a printed circuit board equipped with three circuit parts to a printed circuit board equipped with two circuit parts (refer to FIG. 1(b)).
With this change, in the layout design information A, only the circuit part a2 and the circuit part a3 exist on the board A. On the other hand, three circuit parts being the circuit parts (a1, a2 and a3) exist in the circuit part information A at this point.
Then, a back annotation processing for reflecting the change of the layout design information A on the circuit design information A is performed, and the information of the circuit part a1 is deleted from the circuit design information A (refer to FIG. 1(c)).
FIG. 1(d) shows the state where the information of the circuit part a1 was deleted from the layout design information A on the board A, and the information of the circuit part a1 was deleted from the circuit design information A by the back annotation processing.
Next, referring to FIGS. 2(a)(b)(c), description will be made for the procedure of adding the information of the circuit part a1, which was deleted from the board A, to the board C to the circuit part information and the layout design information that are in the state shown in FIG. 1(d).
Firstly, the designer performs a processing in which the information of the circuit part a1 is taken out from the circuit part information A and the information of the circuit part a1 taken out from the circuit part information A is added to the circuit design information C of the board C (refer to FIG. 2(a)).
Next, the designer performs a processing of adding the information of the circuit design information C so as to connect a terminal of the circuit part c3 of the board C with the a terminal of the circuit part a1, as shown in FIG. 2(b).
By the processing above, the information of the circuit part a1 is newly added to the circuit design information C of the board C and information that the circuit part c3 is connected with the circuit part a1 is added, and the circuit design information C is updated.
Then, a forward annotation processing in which the updated circuit design information C of the board C is reflected on the layout design information C is performed, and the arrangement of the circuit part a1 is added to the layout design information C (refer to FIG. 2(c)).
As described above, in Prior Art, the layout design information and the circuit design information of each printed circuit board independently exist and are not coordinated to each other, so that each information cannot be automatically exchanged with another printed circuit board beyond each printed circuit board, so the designer needed to perform the sending and receiving processing of information between each printed circuit board by taking many procedures, and work efficiency of design work was deteriorated.
Further, in many cases, in designing a plurality of printed circuit boards, designers are different in each printed circuit board and the designers are separated in each printed circuit board, so that there was a problem that a lot of time was spent in information communication between each designer just to move one circuit part from a printed circuit board to another printed circuit board.
It is to be noted that prior art that the present applicant knows at the point of filing a patent is as described above and not an invention according to document publicly known invention, so there is no prior art information to be described.